Review of Daniel Shapiro's HOW THE POTATO CHIP WAS INVENTED

At any given time random thoughts converge in our
minds like background noise—garbled dreams concocted from the day’s google
search hits, binge viewing, game show and sitcom reruns, celebrity trivia—all
this media pulp is strained through personality so that outer reality is merged
with inner landscapes. Daniel M. Shapiro’s first full-length collection of
prose poems, How the Potato Chip was
Invented, features the mind as it is now, media-infused, yet old-school
philosophic, humanistic and comic.

In part one of Shapiro’s three-part collection, he
gleefully takes readers into the past, into the minds of pop-culture and
historical icons: “Richard M. Nixon Attends Star Wars Premiere, Brea Mann
Theatre, 5/25/77”, and “Thomas Edison’s Favorite Invention” are two examples that
are timely for my generation— American children of the 1970s—unwitting recipients
of mass media’s inculcation on our minds, 24/7. We couldn’t get away from it,
unless we lived on a remote ranch with no television, or deep in a mountain
valley with no reception.We were the
first generation to collectively imagine ourselves famous. In “Independent
Film,” Shapiro plays the game of what actor would play me in a movie of my
life:

Ethan
Hawke will star as me. Hawke will sit by

himself
as a lone guitar leaks out a soundtrack. I

remember when the moon
still wore velvet curtains,

Hawke
will say . . .

.
. . Finally, Hawke will look at himself in the

bathroom
mirror, will survey the creases in his

skin,
will see the real me as if I were hiding in

the
medicine cabinet . . .

Shapiro illuminates how the mind works for many of
us, children of the Harvest Gold and Avocado Green era. And as I read through
section two’s persona poems featuring bawdy grinning Gene Rayburn, host of Match Game, and the pathos-laden humor
of Charles Nelson Reilly, I eerily feel the poems are about me—as if Shapiro is
playing me in a book of prose poems. “Language Acquisition” recalls early days
on the couch with Mom, three or four hours at a time, as she “snickered at
words, at how words can fit where they don’t belong . . . She propped me up on
her lap to see and hear them say a phrase at a time, even one word, after which
a bell would ring . . . the bells we associate with rewards . . .”

Part three reconnoiters among 70s, 80s, 90s, and
early 2000s celebrities—famous and infamous—Metallica circa ’83, Lynette
“Squeaky” Fromme, Natalie Wood, David Bowie, Julia Roberts, and Tom Hanks. Then
Shapiro hooks us up with with Fred Astaire serenading Fergie, and Max von Sydow
at IKEA. The most endearing celebrity encounter is “Don Knotts Returns to his
Hometown of Morgantown, W.Va., 1982”. In the density of a masterfully written
prose poem, Knotts’ professional career is concisely portrayed; then Shapiro
compassionately engages us with Knott’s imaginary existential crisis as he
rides a “personal rail system . . . alone until dawn.” Sometimes we, as
consumers of celebrity, forget the soul behind the famous face.

Prose poems are high risk, many falter. Shapiro’s
prose poems are vivid, intriguing, confounding, quirky, at times lyrical, and concentrated—all
as it should be with no missteps. Shapiro takes readers deep
into celebrity subtext that feels familiar, yet voyeuristic at times. We are
rewarded with worthwhile insights into American life in a hyper-media age. (December
2013)

Reviewer bio: Kim Loomis-Bennett is a life-long
resident of Washington State, besides a detour into Oregon where she met her
husband. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in The November 3rd Club,
The Copperfield Review, Poet’s Quarterly, and Hippocampus Magazine.
Her recent work is included in The
Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems
is also featured on the Washington State Poet Laureate's blog at http://kathleenflenniken.com/blog/.
She teaches at Centralia College. She will graduate with her MFA, January 2014.